Hamza Yusuf NDE: Does near death experience prove Islam right?

Honestly, I left Islam thanks to your website a couple of years ago and thanks to my little understanding of English so I was able to grasp all your writings. But, I left Islam completely after I bought your book. No more 5 times prayers and fasting after that and no more love to Muhammad.

The only person who knows I am no longer muslim is my very long time best friend. He is very educated and has long list of overseas education. He is a very nice person and always kind to me. We care each other. We share every knowledge we have.

I have shared your site to him. At first he was impressed with your understanding of Islam and started to view Muhammad lower than he did before.

Now, he changed his mind about Islam since he learned from Hamza Yusuf ( an American convert to Islam) that he converted to Islam thanks to his Near Death Experience.

Can you explain it to us , If Islam is lie, why Hamza Yusuf’s NDE is effective to take him to Islam as well as those who meet Jesus in NDE?

This is going to be my discussion with my best friend.

Thanks for your answer.

Millions of people have reported NDE. I have been reading their stories in www.nderf.org since last year and so far I read 500 of them. I also watched more than 200 stories of NDE on Youtube.

People who die report a variety of experiences. Some see God and heaven and others are sent to hell. Some just hover over their bodies and don’t leave this plane of existence and then reenter their bodies.

The experiences can be diverse depending of their intensity. Although these people see a glimpse of the other life their understanding does not improve. Each interprets their experience based on their limited understanding. One person who had a near death experience and did not leave this world, saw his body and then move away travelling through the town and flying over the trees. He felt very good but then he became scared that if he did not return he may die. So he returned to his body. He asserted that heaven and hell don’t exist because in his NDE he saw neither of them.

Is he right? This is like a person taking a boat and going to UK, landing on a shore and looking around seeing no houses and no people. He then returns, telling everyone that he had been in UK and the country is uninhabited.

Hamza Yusuf had his NDE when he was 18. Although I searched I did not find any details of his experience. After reading Raymond Moody’s Life after Life, in 1977 he became interested in Islam, which he had studied prior to his NDE. He then said “I find it fascinating that many of the experiences that people have, are very similar to what has been defined by the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as what happens after death.” For some reason Yusuf does not talk about his own experience.

Is Muhammad’s description of afterlife similar to what near death experiencers report? Some of these people report having gone to hell. The concept of hell existed before Islam. Plato wrote about a soldier who died and after a few days resuscitated. He then told about his hell and heaven experience. Hell is described in the Bible as well.

Muhammad learned about religious concept from a certain Zayd ibn Amr (Umar’s uncle and father in law) who converted to Abrahamic religion and because he insulted the religion of the Quraysh, he was harassed by his brother Khattab and took refuge in the cave Hira. Muhammad used to visit Amr in that cave and he would read him Biblical stories. Some of the poems of Zayd have survived and it is easy to see they are the source of most of the Meccan verses.

If the near death experiencer’s description of hell matches that of Muhammad, we cannot credit him. There are numerous stories in the Meccan Quran that are found also in Zayds poems. Muhammad was so impressed by Zayd that he told Umar, he is the only non-believer that Muslims can pray for. Note that Muhammad refused to pray for his own mother, uncle (Abu Talib) and grandfather. Since Zayd’s poems have survived, and they predate the Quran, we can be certain that Muhammad learned those stories from Zayd.

Although Muhammad description of hell was correct, everything he said about heaven was not. Souls have no gender. Sometimes they appear in a bodily form, but that is mostly for the benefit of the newcomers. One woman said she met her elderly father in her NDE. He told her in heaven people are not old or young. They have no form and the reason he chose to appear to her as an old man was because that is how she remembered her. Another person said he saw angels. He thought to himself, his idea of angels was that they had wings but these angels have no wings. In heaven no thought is secret. As soon as he thought this, the angels said, would you rather want to see us with wings, we can grow them right away. He then said no, you look fine the way you are. The point is that spirits are formless, even though they may sometimes appear as having a physical form. Some near death experiencers say they had no body. They were only a mind who could see 360 degrees. Others report of not only having a body, but also their clothing.

Just like God, the essence of the spirit is formless. Without form there is no gender. Therefore, it is absurd to talk of sex in heaven. Sex is for procreation. Physical bodies are born from other bodies through the process of sex. Souls come from God. They are not born from other souls. Love is spiritual in nature. Sex is carnal in nature. Muhammad’s heaven is all about sex. So although he was right about hell, he was wrong about heaven. I read hundreds of stories of heaven and none is as Muhammad described it. Men in heaven don’t sit in a row reclining against their cushion, drinking wine, being served by young boys like pearl and banging virgins.

The fact that Yusuf did not describe his NDE makes me believe his experience must have been hellish and later he found what he saw matches what Muhammad said. Had he seen Heaven he would have known Muhammad was wrong. Those who go to heaven see no similarity between that place and Muhammad’s description of it. Many Muslims go to hell and are rescued by Jesus. See the videos below.

Yusuf was born to Christian parents but he never understood Christ orf believed him. He wrote, “’The only reason I’m a Christian, is because my parents taught me that Jesus was my savior, Blah, Blah, Blah. If I was born in Israel, I would have been a Jew maybe or a Palestinian.”

Jesus made it clear that one does not go to heaven merely for calling himself a Christian. (Matthew 7:21). If indeed Yusuf’s experience of the other world was hellish, it is because his faith in Jesus was nothing more than “blah, blah, blah.” Then he comes back to this world and instead of seeking the truth, he is mesmerized by Muhammad, because his description of hell matched his own NDE.

Although God does not tell us what to believe and he has given us total freedom to choose him or hell, he has given every person enough commonsense to differentiate between good and evil. The Sira leaves no doubt that Muhammad was an evil man. How can you convince God that you followed a man who raided villages and towns, tortured men to death and slept with their young wives because you loved Him. How can you expect God accept any excuse from you for following a mass murderer, a thief, a pedophile?

Yusuf’s confusion becomes clear from these words. He wrote, “And one of the signs of the later days of the human experience, according to the Islamic tradition, is that people will be brought back from death. This is in the Hadith literature, or the traditions of the Prophet.”

He confuses body and spirit. What survives is our spirit. Once the body is gone, it is gone. You can never reenter in your present body. We return to earth and the elements that make us will be recycled in other bodies. The concept of resurrection as described by Muhammad and believed by Yusuf is a logical and scientific absurdity, something even the Meccans of his time knew.

The Resurrection is spoken of in the Bible, but it is not like how Muhammad explained it. 1 Corinthian 15: 35-40 says, “But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:And that which thou sowest.”

So the body that is buried is not the same that survives. One is made of matter, and remains here, in the material world. It is destroyed. It will never rise. Our consciousness is independent from our body. That consciousness survives. Note how Paul calls people who think like Muhammad fools. He continues, “There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.”

Muhammad had no understanding of the spiritual world. His heaven and hell, his rewards and punishments are all corporal and physical. He thought when people die they will remain in their grave until the Day of Resurrection when the dead will rise from their tomb and will receive heir judgment which will be enjoyed or suffered physically.

The very fact that Yusuf had a NDE should have sufficed for him to know Muhammad was a liar. According to Muhammad and his eschatology, heaven and hell are not operational, until the Day of Judgement. This is more important evidence that Muhammad was not a prophet of God which Yusuf chose to ignore.

The definition of Hell, Resurrection, punishment in grave, god, monotheism, etc., predate Muhammad. He rehashed what was already known. He was right sometimes and wrong most of the times. We must not believe in someone for being right once or twice. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. If one who claims to be a prophet is wrong once, then he is not a prophet of God and Muhammad was wrong a lot.

Although Muslims also go to heaven, they are only saved from hell by Jesus. Millions of people of all faiths say they saw Jesus in heaven, but I have not read anyone saying they saw Muhammad in heaven. Based on what I have learned from NDE stories and know about Muhammad, I have no doubt that Muhammad is in hell. Denying that would be tantamount to denying Divine Justice. If Hitler deserved hell Muhammad deserved it too.